Senate Democrats reject Ryan budget

Senate Democrats defeated Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget on their floor Thursday night, a vote the majority party forced to make a political point.

Democrats noted that Senate Republicans, after praising the Ryan budget, didn’t try to introduce a version of it as an amendment to the Senate budget resolution. So Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Budget Committee, offered it instead.

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The two chambers would have to reconcile Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget — which overwhelmingly passed the House on Thursday — and Murray’s spending bill for either one of them to affect government spending. That is an unlikely scenario, despite the fact the Senate will soon pass the Murray resolution.

The Senate began considering amendments to the budget Thursday evening, agreeing to a measure that would recommend eliminating the medical device tax from Obamacare and another that would prohibit turning Medicare into a voucher program.

Because the amendments are to the budget resolution, the votes are non-binding but take the temperature of lawmakers for support for potential future bills.

Even though senators voted on five amendments to the budget Thursday, they still have a long Friday ahead. The upper chamber will consider several amendments beginning at 11 a.m. and then start a “vote-a-rama” at about 2:30 p.m., a process of rapidly voting on amendments that can last more than 10 hours.

One of the banner votes on Thursday was on the Ryan budget, which Democrats have sought to juxtapose against their own. Five Republicans broke with Democrats to oppose the House Republican’s budget: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Ted Cruz (Texas), Dean Heller (Nev.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.).

The Senate also voted 79-20 to recommend eliminating the medical device tax, a controversial part of the Affordable Care Act.

The House passed the Ryan plan, which tries to balance the budget in the long term by cutting spending, repealing Obamacare, and overhauling Medicare while avoiding any tax increases, Thursday morning on a mostly party-line vote.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), at a press conference to continue criticizing Democrats for not presenting a balanced budget, said the Senate focus should be on the Democrats’ budget, not Ryan’s.

“They are very, very determined to change the focus away from their plan to the Ryan plan, and I’m not interested in talking about that right now,” Sessions said.

Democrats are expected to have enough votes to pass the budget resolution, but they would like to limit defections to no more than four — in order to prevent Vice President Joe Biden from coming to the Senate to cast a tie-breaking vote if only 50 Senate Democrats vote for it.